I disagree with a lot of what you're saying (e.g. the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917, years before Hitler's rise to power), but all of that's irrelevant.

If you think Israel shouldn't be playing the victim, then say that- but it has nothing to do with whether or not the Holocaust actually happened. Let's try to stay on point.

Please reread the OP. I never said that Jews have some special status as victims, I just said that those who deny they were victims are incorrect.

As long as you're including Jews, then no problem.

No reason- but some people say that Jews weren't victims at all, or that they provoked the Nazis. That's who I'm addressing in this post.

A Jew who converted to Catholicism and proved a virulent antisemite. He is not a historical authority, he is an ideologue.

I'm more interested in hearing what you think about the other things I said. Also, if being Jewish by blood somehow makes you an authority on the Holocaust, well...

PS. This is an article that refutes some of Freedman's nuttier ideas.

It's a really long video- I'll watch it, but just give me a little background.

I know he says he's an insider, and other revisionists say he's an insider, but all I can find about his professional background is that he worked for a soap company and as a small-time venture capitalist. He's not a [former] rabbi or a big industrialist, so it seems strange that he would be privy to all this information. After all, he was born in 1890, and so would only have been 24 when WWI broke out.

What evidence is there that he really was an insider? Like, these Administrations- what are their names? I just want to see if I can find some independent verification.

Right, I'm just looking for independent sources. No sense in devoting over an hour to watching the video if he isn't who he says he is.

I did, and you're right- there wasn't much. I even looked on some revisionist sites, and I couldn't find anything. Are you sure this guy is the real deal?

I don't doubt he is real- nobody seems to dispute that. I'm just looking for evidence that he actually did the things he's claiming. Otherwise, why should I believe him?

I just watched some of it. I seriously don't know why a moderately wealthy businessman with no political background and no powerful connections to speak of would be entrusted with such earth-shaking information covering such a broad period of time.

I mean, let's say you were on a secret committee that had fraudulently led the U.S. into a war. Eventually, the war ends and nobody's the wiser. Then a new guy, who was in his mid-twenties when the war began, joins the committee. Would you fill him in on 100% of all old business, or would you restrict his access to ongoing activities?

Also, Freedman sued the American Jewish Committee for libel in 1946. Even setting aside the fact that the case was dismissed after only a month, this suggests that he had a falling out with them before the Nuremberg Trials- so how could he possibly have known all this stuff?

I know I sound super closed-minded, but given the stakes, aren't we obligated to think really critically about stuff like this?

If he hated the Jewish people, with whom he had parted ways, maybe he wanted to slander them? As a convert to Christianity, he may have wished to demonstrate his new-found loyalty or, perceiving Jews (who tended to be a progressive, liberal group) as a threat, he may have seen this as a means to the end of discrediting them. Alternatively, he may have wanted to make a name for himself as an author and speaker-- after all, I assume this speech, given at a fancy hotel, was a paid engagement, right?

Those are just a few possibilities, and without any supporting evidence, they make a lot more sense to me.

Also, I'm reading this and seeing a lot of errors. To give an example that's more humorous than it is significant:

There is not one word of "Yiddish" in ancient "Hebrew" nor is there one word of ancient "Hebrew" in "Yiddish".

The phrase "geyn kaken aften yam" is a Yiddish put-down, meaning "go shit in the ocean." "Yam" is also used to mean sea or ocean in ancient (and modern) Hebrew.

Freedman said they were Khazars, but the article says otherwise:

The finding should thoroughly debunk one of the most questionable, but still tenacious, hypotheses: that most Ashkenazi Jews can trace their roots to the mysterious Khazar Kingdom that flourished during the ninth century in the region between the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire, Richards and Ostrer said.

The genetics suggest many of the founding Ashkenazi women were actually converts from local European populations.

Also, what on earth does 6 million have to do with anything- especially in that context? So, Flavius Josephus (a Jewish apostate who renounced his heritage and was granted Roman citizenship) reported that six million Jews lived in the Roman Empire in 70 A.D. So what? If you think that confirms your views on the Holocaust, then you aren't the critical thinker I'd hoped you'd be.

Look, six million is just a number. It has no special significance, and everyone agrees that it is, at best, a rough estimate from a deeply chaotic time.

But that's your source... do you mean to say it's unreliable?

Also, do you think Josephus was a Zionist??

I agree with everything you're saying, and I do think that the Holocaust seriously contributed to the creation of Israel.

I could be wrong, but I think you might be thinking of Fred Leuchter, whose report has since been thoroughly discredited. Sources available on request.

There's no evidence that his books were burned, but there is plenty of evidence that they were based on bad science.

Yeah, who cares if he was wrong? Who cares if he was using bad science to incite racial hatred?

He knew what he was getting himself into- it's not like he didn't realize it was illegal.

You think that his being jailed automatically proves he was right? You're wrong.

It's a crime (in Germany and 13 other countries) not to question the Holocaust, but to deny or trivialize it.

It could mean what you say- but it could also mean that they've decided that the danger of forgetting such a sinister chapter of human history outweighs the societal value of holocaust revisionism. Unless you have already convinced yourself that there is a conspiracy at hand, I think you will agree that this simpler explanation makes a lot more sense.

He was inciting racial hatred by using bad science to "show" that the Holocaust never happened, thereby implying the existence of a Jewish conspiracy to suggest it did.

I did not independently determine that his science was bad; I did a google search and read the results for myself. To the best of my knowledge, he has never refuted his critics, who (to my untrained eye) make a lot of sense.

I made this account two years ago, after my main account was banned for r/askhistorians because I was being a goofball while drunk. I would have posted this via my main account, but I didn't want to get doxed or whatever.

Read the full comments and look at my downvotes. I'm not doing anything to manipulate this thread.

If anything, I think you're the one being difficult, what with your misrepresentation of gas chamber doors. If you want to discuss things, go ahead, but don't make a liar of yourself.

I thought you'd found the real door?

Anyway, the door is irrelevant- it just needed to (A) keep people in and (B) form a seal sufficient for the build-up of fatal levels of gas.

A link to what?

I said it was not the real door because the website hosting the picture said it was not the real door, not because I had a picture of the real door. If you read that, then you knew it was not the real door, and you lied. If you did not read it, I apologize.

I have since done your googling for you: the door.

Also, the Auschwitz museum archives contain 'a letter from Karl Bischoff, the head architect at Auschwitz, to the German Armament Works dated March 31, 1943 orders "three gas tight doors" for Crema 3 following "exactly the size and construction of those already delivered" for Crema 2. Bischoff reminded the manufacturer that the doors had to have a spy-hole of double 8-mm glass "with a rubber seal and metal fitting." The order was characterized as "very urgent." ...there is also a request for a "handle for the gastight door" (Order No. 162, 6 March 1943) and a request for "twenty-four-gastight anchoring screws for gas tight doors" for Cremas 4 and 5 (Order No. 280, 6 April 1943).'

haha exactly

Well trolled

The doors were made with two layers of wood, with thick felt in between. The windows were made out of reinforced glass.

The gas chambers didn't have to be airtight in order for victims to receive a fatal dose of zyklon-b. How is this not obvious?

People can commit suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning simply by laying a rolled-up blanket at the door to their garage.

Caption to that picture: "The door into the washroom that is now included in the gas chamber, Oct. 2005."

Further along: "Some visitors today mistakenly think that the door shown in the photo above was the door into the gas chamber, but it is actually the door into the former wash room."

This is the kind of dishonesty I'm talking about. Unless you just missed that part.

This was the 1930s and 1940s. Moreover, a genius engineer knows to use whatever works. They didn't have to replace 100% of the air with poison gas.

I explained this in my other comment. You're the one trying to derail the discussion- first with your misrepresentations of the gas chamber at Auschwitz and now by Jew-baiting.

Also, I know a lot of Orthodox Jews. Some are honest, some aren't- but none of them use the Talmud to justify lying to Gentiles.

In fact-- I recently told some Orthodox Jewish clients (I'm an attorney- go figure!) that they could get around $30,000 by claiming that our adversary (a gov't agency) misquoted them. They decided not to, saying it was unethical and that God would provide. This was just one couple, but I thought it was pretty noble of them.

Now can we please get back to the subject at hand, or are you going to keep circumventing the issue?

(A) I am aware of the previous claims of 6,000,000 being killed. Let me ask you what’s more likely: that it’s a coincidence, or that the Elders of Zion are smart enough to fool everyone and manufacture all this evidence, yet dumb enough to repeat the same claim twice in thirty years? It’s not like six million is some kind of magic fucking number. What’s more, if they manufactured all that proof for the “second” Holocaust, why didn’t they manufacture the same for the “first” one? Why did Wilhelm Hottl testify that Eichmann told him six million were killed? I understand that you aren’t an anti-Semite, so why do you think that the Jewish people, writ large, can’t be trusted to tell the truth?

I just skimmed the first chapter of that book, but so far it’s just about how wealthy and influential the Jews were. I don't see the relevance. Could you summarize it a bit, or at least refer me to pages with important information? It’s hardly fair to expect me to read 150 pages immediately.

(B) I’ve read up on it, and that red/pink pigmentation argument doesn’t hold water; when you’re malnourished, you can’t oxygenate your blood efficiently. According to medical examinations conducted on Jews still in ghettos (i.e. before being moved to the camps, where conditions were even worse), the average cardiac output was 50% of normal. You can read more here
Ah, I’ve seen you use this “expedient Germans” language before, in another thread!! While it’s interesting to see you equating the Nazis with the German people, I disagree. The Nazis were not expedient. In his memoirs, Speer has a lot to say about the absurd redundancies and inefficiencies that pervaded the Third Reich. How do you think they found themselves in a war on two fronts? Because they were idealists, that’s why. They adhered to a idealist racism that demanded an all-out war against “Jewish Bolshevism,” extending from the SS to the Wehrmacht itself. See Omar Bartov’s “Hitler’s Army” for more. (You can just skim it- the facts are borne out on virtually every page).

Simply put, Nazi Germany would not have been Nazi Germany without the Holocaust and the war crimes in the East. The following is from an entry in Goebbels’ diary, dated 12/12/1941: "... Concerning the Jewish question the Fuhrer is determined to make a clean sweep. He prophesied that, if they were once again to cause a world war, the result would be their own destruction. That was no figure of speech. The world war is here, the destruction (Vernichtung) of the Jews must be the inevitable consequence. The question must be seen without sentimentality. We are not here in order to have sympathy with the Jews, rather we sympathise with our own German people. If the German people have now once again sacrificed as many as 160,000 dead in the Eastern campaign, then the authors of this bloody conflict must pay with their lives".

This account was later corroborated by Hans Frank. See here for much, much more

As for the destruction of a potential source for slave labor: nobody ever said that Jews were gassed indiscriminately. You can find tons of sources for that.

(C) Hitler’s involvement and responsibility for the Holocaust does not turn on his attendance of the Wansee conference or its proceedings. This question was litigated extensively in Irving v. Penguin Books & Lipstadt, and a non-Jewish judge determined that Hitler quelled any lingering sympathy for the Jews in 1941. Thereafter, it was open season.

I first began reading up on revisionism because I thought I might be convinced. That is why I have read so extensively, and why I choose to engage in debate on the subject. I have spent an hour writing this post alone. This isn’t about me.

already in the public psyche
That makes no sense.

it appears it was being used in humanitarian money-making schemes...
Don't know what that second "it" refers to. If you mean the "first" Holocaust, then there's still need for proof. If you mean it was effective despite a lack of proof, that still doesn't disprove the "second" Holocaust.

Insofar as the 6,000,000 is an estimate, that's because of the extent of the Nazis' destruction. As to Hottl's testimony, there's no evidence that he was tortured, so why assume a more complex explanation where a simple one would do? Eichmann's statement is not hearsay, or at least would be excluded from the general legal precept against hearsay as both a present sense impression and a statement against interest. I don't mean to be rude, but part of me thinks "leave it to a revisionist to dismiss a confession simply because the speaker is a criminal!"

People will believe anything- sure enough.

There is plenty of science: see section VII. Auschwitz and genocide on such a scale could not have been committed by a single order-- but there is nevertheless ample evidence of Hitler's involvement. See here for more like the following:

"This criminal race [the Jews] has the two million dead from the World War on its conscience, now again hundreds of thousands. Noone can say to me: we cannot send them in the morass! Who then cares about our people? It is good if the terror (Schrecken) we are exterminating Jewry goes before us". (Hitler, Oct. 25, 1941)

Anyway, I get that you've got things to do- no hard feelings. To paraphrase that notorious criminal, Billy Joel: don't go changing just to please me.

Haha, you're excused.

Shit, I just accidentally deleted my comment!!

Ok, so three questions. I know you're going to criticize my sources because they're too Jewish, but try to bear in mind that most non-Jews aren't going to be interested in proving something so widely accepted as the Holocaust.

1) As for the number of Jews, look here. Approximately 6.5 million in Eastern Europe, 1.5 million in Central Europe, and 1 million in Western and Southern Europe.

2) This has nothing to do with whether or not the Holocaust happened, but rather your own valuation of human life. At any rate, I don't know of any individual Jews who accepted reparations. You're welcome to provide contrary evidence. Israel did accept reparations, but I don't think that decision was very popular with the average Jew. At any rate, whether you think they were overly greedy depends on your point of view. You can read more about it here.

3) I don't think it's "obvious" that western scholars' accounting of the number of Jewish victims would have relied on a single Soviet-era plaque, located deep within the Iron Curtain. That's exactly why this "Jewish organization" removed the plaque: because it was incorrect. At any rate, the six million figure seems to predate the plaque. This number was first suggested by Wilhelm Höttl, an SS officer and a Doctor of History, during the Nuremberg Trials: "[At a meeting in August, 1944] Eichmann ... told me that, according to his information, some 6,000,000 (six million) Jews had perished until then – 4,000,000 (four million) in extermination camps and the remaining 2,000,000 (two million) through shooting by the Operations Units and other causes, such as disease, etc."

Yad Vashem acknowledges it's very hard to come up with a precise figure, given all the chaos, but openly displays the names of 3,000,000 individual victims at its visitors' center.

Do you have anything else?

About 8.5 million

Anyway, I was only counting those countries that were occupied by the Nazis: Germany, Poland, the Baltic States, the western USSR, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, etc.

I even omitted Norway and Denmark, because so few Jews from those countries were killed.

Let me make sure I understand: first, I said, "Approximately 6.5 million in Eastern Europe, 1.5 million in Central Europe, and 1 million in Western and Southern Europe." Then, I said "8.5 million." That's a difference of 500,000.

To explain: the first time, I was doing the math in my head, leaving out countries like Denmark, Norway, etc. Totally subjective, and that's on me-- I should have been more accurate. The second time, I just cited an outside source.

I didn't mean to suggest that there were 9 million in all of Europe- I was, as you had instructed me, only counting countries that were occupied by the Nazis, though again I did leave some out.

Can you cite your sources about the reparations, etc.?

I was counting Russian Jews who were in Nazi-occupied territory. Just because they weren't "resettled" in camps doesn't mean they were safe.

Wait, what?

Hungary, part of the Axis powers, occupied by Germany in May 1944.
Bulgaria, allied with the Axis powers
Italy, member of the Axis powers, then occupied after the Allied invasion
Yugoslavia, conquered by Nazis

Dogg, if I'm confused, and that's possible, I think it's because you're not being clear. What the hell is "occupied Nazi Germany"? Germany wasn't "occupied" by the Nazis. Do you mean "occupied Nazi territory," the phrase you initially used?

If so, you'll have to excuse me for thinking that countries like Hungary, which were effectively German puppet states, should be included. Please start over, and be specific! I promise I'll try to accommodate you.

PS: 100% of Holocaust reparations have gone to survivors, so why would this lead anyone to exaggerate the number of victims?

Don't sweat it. Anyway, this should answer your question. Anything else?

Belzec: mass graves
Treblinka: mass graves
More on Treblinka
Sobibor: mass graves

Gas chambers

There's plenty more, but I'm not going to get any more specific than that when you're just asking for "hard evidence."

I have heard about those, yes. I've even read about a "corpse roller coaster," which turned out to be just a tram that carried corpses from the gas chambers to the crematoria-- exaggeration for comic effect is typical of Holocaust revisionism.

Now, it's true- a few witnesses mentioned things like steam chambers. It's possible that this is evidence of cracks in the conspiracy. Then again, everyone exaggerates. Everyone gossips. When you've suffered, when you're desperate for revenge, you're even more likely to exaggerate, more likely to spread rumors. But is this proof of a conspiracy? No, it isn't.

Usually, when authorities discard unreliable testimony, people realize it's because they want to focus on what can be proven. If you aren't pre-assuming a conspiracy, what makes you think that here, they were "sweeping it under the rug"?

There were plenty of witnesses who limited their testimony to the facts- that Hitler approved the killing of Jews and others, through gas chambers and other methods, and so forth. Many of these witnesses were Germans who were neither tortured nor threatened. Some would go on repeat their stories verbatim in West Germany's criminal trials during the 1960s.

Of course, there is also plenty of independent, contemporaneous evidence.

This is one of the most common tactics employed by Deniers and Revisionists. They set an impossible standard of proof for the Holocaust, but embrace anything that seems to refute it, no matter how suspect.

You asked for "hard evidence" of mass graves, so I provided it- "In one 26-foot-deep trench alone they found a layer of human ashes 3 meters thick." That's from the Polish investigation in 1945. As for the Kola investigation, the report is freely available through the link I provided. To quote just one part of the article: "The drill core brought to the surface putrid pieces of human remains, including pieces of skull with skin and tufts of hair attached, and unidentifiable lumps of greyish, fatty, human tissue."

Now you're telling me I need to find proof for my proof, as though you can only identify chunks of human bone via chemical analysis. Before you insist that they would have decomposed: these are carrots after ten years in a landfill.

Like I said in the OP, any fair-minded person would accept that on face value, but deniers/revisionists are forever moving the goalposts. They claim to be open-minded, but in reality they are too committed to their fantasies of Zionist conspiracies to face facts.

As for Caroline Sturdy Colls' work: you're right, she seems to have misinterpreted a logo emblazoned on the tiles as a Star of David. This was a stupid assumption that "immediately [sprung] to mind" (per your article) on her first seeing the tiles. Note, however, that this does not invalidate her findings. That first paragraph? About how revisionists will bend over backwards to accept anything as a victory, no matter how minor? I wrote that before I even got to that article. Amazing.

Third link "baseless claims," supported only by "photos" that don't correspond with your understanding of what is "supposed" to have happened. Nobody said that the skeletons were crushed to a fine powder. I see loose femurs and what you might describe as a "whole lot of small white rocks." The lack of coffins, markers, individual plots, or even a fence all suggest something sinister- but you've got your agenda.

Yes, your own agenda, which is why I need "better sources," but you're content to just say "The Auschwitz museum director is on tape..." without providing a link to some audio. Anyway, there were multiple gas chambers, just as decorated Polish resistance fighter Witold Pilecki indicated in his report on Auschwitz, available here in full.

Proper evidence? Testimony is proper evidence. Forensic studies are proper evidence. Photographs, both contemporaneous and subsequent, are proper evidence. Internal SS memoranda are proper evidence.

You disregard all of them, and in favor of what, exactly? A misinterpreted logo on some floor tiles and your gloss on one decontextualized quote from a museum director.

that is a CLAIM, it is not PROOF.

The report says "they found." I don't believe scientists can distill human remains into Internet form. Again, you're hewing to two different standards of proof; one for me, and another for yourself.

Hence your selective interpretation of this interview, in which the museum director also speaks at length about other gas chambers, authentic and untouched. Purely for the sake of argument: if you accept his account of the rebuilt chamber, you should accept his account of the original ones, as well. Now, I'll grant you that the Soviets rebuilt one of the gas chambers, and that this one is used for tours. After all, it makes perfect sense not to bring tourists into the originals, which should be preserved.

Re: Treblinka. That Wikipedia article says they "crushed the remaining bones with mallets," not that they worked them over with a mortar and pestle. There's no reason to think that slave laborers would apply themselves to make sure that every single bone was pulverized beyond recognition. For that matter, there's no reason to think they would have adhered to the same process throughout the time Treblinka was operating. Moreover, the photograph at issue is extremely grainy- it's silly to say the photo definitely doesn't contain anything smaller than a femur when you can't actually tell.

Hours of excavation
anything near the surface

I suppose the ground is very hard.

Incidentally, Jews do not scatter ashes, in Treblinka or otherwise- cremation is not only prohibited by religious mandate, but frowned upon as a cultural taboo. I cannot imagine this has ever happened, let alone that it happens "often." The very idea is laughable.

There's nothing silly in anticipating your arguments. I had already done it once before, when I predicted your embrace of anything that would support your claim, no matter how irrelevant- i.e., Coll's misapprehension about the tiles' logo.

I am being reasonable. I presented proof, but you demanded more. I accommodated, and still you were not satisfied. You moved the goalposts- I simply called a spade a spade. You rejected the Daily Mail when all it did was provide a convenient summary of Colls' findings, yet hold up the New Observer Online as some shining beacon of intrepid journalism. You are wrong, but you will not own it.

I am tempted to accuse you of running away, but that would be pointless. Everyone has things to do, and I can't ask you to sit around all day debating. That said, "I'll not" is an archaic construction and it does not do you any favors.

you'll accuse me of not sticking to my word.

Didn’t you just say I was being “silly” in trying to predict your arguments? If so, you’re doubly silly, because I literally closed that post by saying I was tempted to accuse you of running away, but that I wouldn’t- I realize you may well have better things to do. Heck, you quoted me on it!

The report does have inherent authority: it was written by people who went to the camp and took samples. You can’t just assume they’re lying. What, am I supposed to book us a flight to Poland?

At first, you had me at a loss w/r/t the mass graves at Treblinka. I have since come up with a few possible explanations:

-As the source we’ve both used says, “Sometimes the bones were crushed with machines and sometimes by hand. It was not a precision process but it worked.” Presumably, then, there is room for inconsistency and inattention to detail, especially when you’re dealing with something so unpleasant as a pile of dead bodies.

-Srebnik’s testimony concerns Chelmno, but you realize that processes would vary from camp to camp, so no problem.

-When I first read your quote of Pavel Leleko, I was sorely embarrassed. Sincerely. It was a good burn, no pun intended. However, I want to direct you to the next few lines from Leleko’s deposition, which are available here:

‘During the first year of the existence of the "death camp", the bodies of the dead people were not burned but were buried. Starting in 1943, after the incinerator was built, the pits with the bodies buried in them were opened up and the content burned. All this work was done by the prisoners waiting to die under the supervision of the Germans and of us, the policemen.’
‘One after the other they were brought to the end of the pit, laid on the dead bodies and their heads were cut off or split up with an axe or wooden mallet.’
Here is evidence that they did not adhere to the same procedure.

Ok, so one survivor had her ashes scattered there in 2010. Still, I don’t think that qualifies.

I regret commenting on your writing style. It was needlessly snarky.

All that exists is testimony from Nuremberg, much of which was 'extracted' by torture and threats.

I have revisited this issue, and I do not find any compelling evidence whatsoever. Here, the IHR alleges that Rudolf Hoess' confessions were obtained by torture. They argue by reference to purported irregularities in Hoess' confessions (including the presence of "English style" handwriting, whatever that could mean), but they also rely heavily upon Hoess' own memoirs.

The following is from Hoess' memoirs, and is actually quoted in the IHR article itself: "the interrogations were extremely unpleasant, not so much physically, but far more because of their strong psychological effect."

You can find selections from Hoess' memoirs here. What stands out most, to me, is the wheedling way in which he skirts any and all responsibility for his actions. There is a prime example on page 153, where he writes, "I could not allow myself to form an opinion as to whether this mass execution of the Jews was necessary or not."

If this autobiography was extracted by torture, it is impossibly sophisticated. On reading, it does not smack of Allied propaganda, but of Nazi ideology; see page 155, where he defends the Commissar Order on the grounds that "they started it," when in fact the order totally predates Operation Barbarossa and the invasion of the USSR.

The IHR, a premier voice of Holocaust revisionism, accepts the provenance of Hoess' memoirs. They should: the memoirs are nuanced and subtle. They contain a full accounting of Hoess' life, humanizing him at every turn. While he acknowledges his involvement in the Holocaust, he takes great care to disclaim his moral responsibility. Indeed, he even goes so far as to marvel at the "eager assistance" of the Jewish Sonderkommando (pp. 158, 161). This is something the brazen "Jewish torturers" would never have done, especially given the IHR's account of their sloppy, bloodthirsty methods and fanatical mindset.

Hoess' memoirs were not used in the trial against him, and were published well before any doubts arouse concerning the validity of his various confessions. Simply put, they are the real deal.

"In the spring of 1942 hundreds of people in the full bloom of life walked beneath the budding fruit trees of the farm into the gas chamber to their death, most of them without a hint of what was going to happen to them. To this day I can still see these pictures of the arrivals, the selections, and the procession to their death."
-Memoirs of Rudolph Hoess, p. 159.

That Hoess quote is from a memoir in which he discusses, in detail, all the acts that were contained in his confession. Also, he signed other confessions, but that only concerns the one following his first interrogation.

They would hardly have brought his whip to the prison, so presumably this happened immediately upon arrest. This account does not taint his subsequent confessions, let alone his own memoirs, in which it appears.

As for Rupert Butler’s book- the IHR claims here that Butler was anti-Nazi, but such is not the case. Outside of Butler’s book, I cannot find a single shred of evidence that Bernard Clarke ever existed. Neither Bernard nor Clarke are Jewish names, despite the IHR’s suggestion. [Addendum: also, I don't know why Butler would have asked after his religion or noted it in his book.]

Ken Jones does not corroborate this Clarke’s account, because he does not say they beat Hoess, but rather kept him awake. Tiresome, to be sure, but hardly torture. I’m sure he caught up on his sleep before writing his memoirs, which I note you have not addressed.

Incidentally, Hoess states here that “I was arrested on 11 March 1946 (at 11 pm).” The temperatures could not have been very brutal. Anyway, strange for them to give him some yard time.

You are mistaken- Edward L. Van Roden was speaking about the Malmedy Massacre Trials, not the Nuremberg Trials. The difference is significant, because the defendants were in the care of two different armies (the American and the British, respectively), with manifestly different attitudes when it came to the treatment of prisoners.

There may be enough evidence to consider it a possibility. You do not do this. You insist that it happened, despite Hoess’ memoirs which corroborate everything that he was “tortured” into confessing.

This is why I say you move the goalposts:
You: show me hard evidence of mass graves.
Me: [photo of a mass grave]
You: who knows where it was taken? Who knows when it was taken? The bones are not broken up in a manner consistent with [inconsistently employed] procedures.

You: "All that exists is testimony from Nuremberg, much of which was 'extracted' by torture and threats." Hoess was "almost certainly" tortured.
Me: Hoess’ memoirs, which were not testimony from Nuremberg, corroborate these accounts.
You: “…those are just some of the reasons why I think torture was likely. Enough to consider it a possibility at the very least."

Again, I will not fault you for cutting off our correspondence.

Information concerning both Russian pogroms and the Gulag has always been sketchy, but their historicity is not in doubt. Jews were not the primary victims of the Gulag, but Russian-American Jews (many of whom lived in New York City, home to many of these newspapers) maintained relatively strong networks and advocated for their relations back in the old country- hence these reports of Jews canvassing their governments and, even more, their own communities for aid.

People might want to discuss this with me because they are open-minded and willing to consider simpler explanations that do not commit the "furtive fallacy" of assuming that "history itself is a story of causes mostly insidious and results mostly invidious... that history happens on the back stairs a little after midnight."

Incidentally, you say 1902, but your source begins in 1915.

Here's another quote for you: "In an extreme form, the furtive fallacy is not merely an intellectual error but a mental illness which is commonly called paranoia."

Sheesh

It's a really long video- I'll watch it, but just give me a little background.

I know he says he's an insider, and other revisionists say he's an insider, but all I can find about his professional background is that he worked for a soap company and as a small-time venture capitalist. He's not a [former] rabbi or a big industrialist, so it seems strange that he would be privy to all this information. After all, he was born in 1890, and so would only have been 24 when WWI broke out.

What evidence is there that he really was an insider? Like, these Administrations- what are their names? I just want to see if I can find some independent verification.